Severed Rattlesnake Head Bites Texas Man

Jennifer Sutcliffe told local station KIII-TV that her husband was working in the garden on May 27 when he saw the four-foot rattlesnake and decapitated it.

Ms Sutcliffe called 911 and her husband was airlifted from his home near Corpus Christi to hospital where he was treated with an anti-venom.

"I reached down to pull out a little area of grass that was growing around one of my flowers, and I nearly grabbed the snake", she told The Washington Post. "The snake was not happy about that at all".

"My husband came over and grabbed a shovel and cut off the head", Jennifer said.

He decapitated the snake with a forceful strike of a shovel and assumed the danger had passed. She said he bent down to pick up the remains to discard and was bitten by the severed head, injecting a super dose of venom with its dying twitch. Gizmodoreported one anti-venom doctor worked on "a case where a someone was envenomated by a mummified snake head years after the reptile died". "I ran out there and he was able to get the snake ripped off his hand".

The snake released all of its venom into Sutcliffe's husband, causing him to immediately experience seizures, loss of vision and internal bleeding. Whereas a living rattlesnake will generally bite the victim, imparting a dose of venom into it in the process, a dead rattlesnake will apparently release all of its venom into the victim, as the Texas man found out the hard way. The man is in stable condition.

Thankfully, her partner pulled through, although his kidney function is still week. When he tried to toss the snake in the garbage, the severed head bit him, according to his wife. And naturally, they become aggressive in the throes of death, when they perceive the situation as a last-ditch opportunity to survive.